NeuroLeadership Application of Science Award – 2017

The NeuroLeadership Award for Breakthrough Research (NABR, previously the NeuroLeadership Application of Science Award or NASA) recognizes scientists who conduct innovative, thorough, and insightful research that contributes to bridging the gap between science and application.

The goal of this award is to

1) Urge scientists to consider the application of their work for business and leadership

2) Create opportunities for scientists to engage with the business community

We ask applicants to compose a 250-word summary describing a finding from a recent paper or series of papers (in press acceptable) on which they were an author, outlining the principles on which someone can act. We have a special interest in the areas of making decisions and solving problems, regulating emotions or regulating the self, collaborating, and facilitating change in others or in whole organizations. Applicants are asked to consider how their research could apply to one or more of these areas.

We also require a 2-5 minute video of the researcher describing their work.

The award is accompanied with a $3000 prize to be used at the winner’s discretion. The winner will also be invited to present their work to members of the NeuroLeadership Institute, on a globally available webinar or a conference.

Dr. Milyavskaya’s research examines the power of self-control on goal attainment. Her findings reveal that contrary to popular wisdom, self-control not only doesn’t fuel goal attainment, it can derail it. Instead, it is the ability to avoid situations in which self-control is needed that increases the likelihood of achieving your goals.

Abstract: Dr. Milyavskaya

Self-control is commonly defined as the ability to restrain one’s impulses in the service of greater goals and priorities, and has been viewed by scientists and media alike as a key ingredient for personal goal attainment. According to popular wisdom, self-control brings about the good life, helping people reach their longstanding goals. But is self-control, and specifically restraining powerful desires, really all that it’s cracked up to be? Does resisting temptations actually lead people to accomplish their goals? This seems self-evidently true, but the connection between effortful restraint and goal attainment has been curiously unexamined. Using experience sampling methodologies where participants reported on the desires and temptations that they experienced and the self-control that they used in real-time through the day for 7 days, we found that it is the frequency of experiencing temptations, rather than the amount of self-control exerted, that contributes to successful goal pursuit (assessed 3 months later). This study also found that simply experiencing temptations led people to feel depleted. Depletion in turn mediated the link between temptations and goal attainment, such that people who experienced increased temptations felt more depleted and thus less likely to achieve their goals. Critically, using Bayesian analyses that allowed us to confirm null effects, we found that effortful self-control was consistently unrelated to goal attainment. The best way to attain your goals, then, is not to exert effortful self-control, but to set up your life in such a way that temptations are minimized and the use of self-control is not necessary.

Abstract: Samanez-Larkin

In a series of studies I initiated as a graduate student and continued into my junior faculty years (summarized in Nature Reviews Neuroscience), we showed how motivation and decision making changes across adulthood. Within organizations and as a society we often associate old age with increasing limitations in cognitive capacity yet our research shows that it’s not such a simple story. We document age-related limitations in processing new information in novel situations due to declines in frontostriatal brain function, but we also show that during some decisions older brains are working quite well and older adults do better than younger adults. Emotional processing and regulation improves with age and people gain more experience and knowledge as they grow older. Individuals remain highly motivated in old age. The takeaway for the business world is that we should not make sweeping assumptions about older decision makers. For example, financial decision making doesn’t peak until the mid-50s and people make wise financial decisions well into their 70s and 80s. One possible conclusion of our work (see Box 2 in paper) is that the best decisions within an organization or firm might be made through mixed-age collaborative teams. Young adults are expert at solving novel problems but lack experience and show the lowest levels of emotion/self regulation whereas the opposite is true for older adults. As global demographics continue to shift, society will benefit from letting go of invalid stereotypes and taking advantage of the strengths of old age.

Dr. Crockett’s research explores how to maintain trustworthiness in a conflict of loyalty versus cost-benefit.

Abstract: Crockett

Leaders often face difficult tradeoffs between maximizing overall outcomes and loyalty to individuals. For instance, when budgets are tight should a CEO lay off a few workers to preserve the jobs of many others? In such dilemmas, moral intuitions about loyalty conflict with cost-benefit calculations. One perspective treats such intuitions as “irrational” emotions that leaders should override. But recent work suggests they serve a clear purpose: intuitions that nudge us towards loyalty make us appear more trustworthy.

In recent experiments we asked participants to consider a moral dilemma: is it appropriate to kill one person to save the lives of five others? Next, we gave them the opportunity to invest money with two different partners: a “utilitarian” partner who said it was appropriate to kill one to save many, and an “intuitive” partner who said it was not. We found that people invested more money with the intuitive partner than with the utilitarian. People also rated the intuitive partner as more moral and trustworthy than the utilitarian.

Why don’t people trust utilitarians? Our work suggests people worry that utilitarians lack empathy and respect for social relationships. Trust depends on a willingness to preserve social relationships even when this is costly. These insights suggest a way leaders can preserve trust when cost-benefit choices cannot be avoided. We find that people are willing to trust utilitarians if they indicate that their choice was very difficult. Trust can be maintained as long as leaders communicate social emotions and respect for relationships.

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